Jay Brannan

Texas-born singer, songwriter, and actor Jay Brannan's angelic voice and folky acoustic approach may make him appear like a garden-variety contemporary singer/songwriter, but his musical sensibility brings him closer to hard-to-fit-in-a-box female artists like Ani DeFranco, Lisa Loeb, Sinéad O'Connor, and Liz Phair, and he sounds like nothing so much as a male version of Joni Mitchell at times. Brannan appeared as Seth in John Cameron Mitchell's 2006 film Shortbus, and his song "Soda Shop" was featured prominently in the film's soundtrack. Brannan released a limited-edition four-song EP called disasterpiece (it has also been listed as Unmastered) featuring "Soda Shop" that same year, amending it with two additional songs for a second 2008 edition of disasterpiece in 2008. Later that year he finally released a full-length effort, Goddamned. In 2012, Brannan returned with Rob Me Blind, featuring the single "Greatest Hits." Inspired by his travels while on tour, he recorded an ambitious EP of international cover songs sung in six different languages called Around the World in 80 Jays, which was released in 2013. A year later, a new LP of all original acoustic-based songs called Always, Then & Now appeared.